In her attempt to appeal to youth voters, she has referred to herself as “Chillary” and has asked young folks to describe their student loan debts in terms of emoji s – an openly pandering and insulting gesture on the part of a politician. But her pandering does not extend to deeds, as is evident in numerous issues, not least of these is the legalization or decriminalization of cannabis. Take a look at this article and see what Secretary “Chillary” Clinton really cares about. Hint: it’s her corporate donors. From Marijuana Politics:

“As her lead in the polls continues to dwindle, Hillary Clinton is trying her best to appeal to young voters,who favor her main opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.Clinton goes to ridiculous lengths in her attempts to woo young people into supporting her campaign: she’s whipped and nae-nae’d on Ellen, dubbed herself Chillary Clinton, and even asked college students to describe how they felt about their student debt “in three emojis or less.”

Although it seems that she’ll do anything to get their votes, there’s one thing Hillary Clinton won’t do: champion the issues that young voters care about.

While 77% of young Democrats believe marijuana should be legal, Hillary Clinton is unwilling to support meaningful marijuana reforms. She’s opposed decriminalizing marijuana during her previous presidential run and has given little indication that she changed her position on the issue since. Today, Clinton will only go so far as to support the rescheduling of marijuana to Schedule II, giving it the same legal status as cocaine and methamphetamine.

It’s unlikely that Clinton’s reluctance to embrace marijuana law reform will help her gain popularity among young voters. But her positions on this issue are certainly in line with the interests of a key ally of hers: Big Pharma.

Despite naming the pharmaceutical industry as one of her greatest “enemies,” Hillary Clinton has received more money from drug companies than any other candidate this cycle. Pharmaceutical manufacturers donated more than $340,000 for her 2008 presidential bid – and in just the first six months of her 2016 campaign, Clinton has received over $160,000 from drug companies. To top it off, Big Pharma giants Pfizer and Proctor & Gamble each have donatedbetween $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. And that’s likely just the tip of the iceberg, as Clinton enjoys the support of numerous Super PACs whose finances are notoriously obscure.

Big Pharma has a lot to lose from marijuana reform. The medical properties of marijuana make it a direct competitor with some of their best-selling drugs, namely opioid painkillers like Vicodin and Oxycontin. Recent research suggests that marijuana allows patients to treat their pain with lower doses of opioids and that providing access to marijuana reduces the prevalence of opioid use. Additionally, marijuana cannot be patented, making it difficult for drug companies to profit off its sale.

In other words, pharmaceutical companies cannot get rich off of marijuana – but marijuana could severely impact Big Pharma’s profits.

With Hillary Clinton in their pocket, pharmaceutical companies expect their candidate to protect their bottom line – and that’s exactly what she’s is doing. There’s no doubt that Clinton wants to earn the support of young voters, but she’s unwilling to do that at the expense of her long-standing alliance with the pharmaceutical industry. Hillary Clinton can dab all she wants, but on marijuana, she’s sided with Big Pharma, not with the young voters she wants to seduce.”
Secretary “Chillary” Clinton is an establishment politician with nothing to offer to a new generation of people who desire fundamental change and an end to the status quo, which only benefits the powerful. Let’s let her “chill” in her retirement and look towards the progressive future.

-Eric Scott Pickard is a poet, activist, and artist. He is a journalist with The Fifth Column News and a co-founder of Free Radical Media, and a host of the Free Radical Media podcast.

In his annual address marking the beginning of the Catholic holy season of Lent, His Holiness Pope Francis, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, came out strongly against greed and incited the powerful to care for the poor.

Pope Francis has made strong statements in the past regarding the responsibility of the political and economic elite to address the problem of global poverty, saying in an address to the United States congress last year, “If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.”

In the new Lenten address to members of the Catholic faith released 26 January, the pontiff expands on these themes. Chastising the powerful, Pope Francis writes that

the real poor are revealed as those who refuse to see themselves as such. They consider themselves rich, but they are actually the poorest of the poor. This is because they are slaves to sin, which leads them to use wealth and power not for the service of God and others, but to stifle within their hearts the profound sense that they too are only poor beggars. The greater their power and wealth, the more this blindness and deception can grow… This illusion can also be seen in the sinful structures linked to a model of false development based on the idolatry of money, which leads to lack of concern for the fate of the poor on the part of wealthier individuals and societies; they close their doors, refusing even to see the poor.

He uses even stronger language elsewhere, warning that those among the powerful who refuse to help the poor “will end up condemning themselves and plunging into the eternal abyss of solitude which is hell.”

Such strong statements are rarely known in previous Papal Lenten addresses. However, the focus on power spiritual and temporal works and concern for the poor is in line with Catholic dogma, namely that “salvation” cannot be attained through faith alone, but also through good works.

The Roman Catholic Church, an organization serving roughly 1.2 billion Catholics throughout the world, has been widely criticized over its handling of a scandal involving pedophilia and child sexual assault among its priests. The Church has also long been accused of corruption, from it’s massive political influence in European politics for centuries and the selling of “indulgences” that led to the Protestant Revolution, to the allegations that it helped aid fascism and the Third Reich during the Second World War. s The current pontiff, formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, seems to be attempting to steer the Church back in the direction of public service, moral authority, and aid for the poor. This comes at a time when wealth inequality is reaching critical levels throughout the world, and the current Bishop of Rome seems to be making this his banner issue.

Hello everyone,

We are very happy to announce that the Free Radical Media podcast is now going to be hosted on a new website!

Many of you know that a co-founder of this collective writes for The Fifth Column News, an organization publishes news from around the world, especially “radical” news, and is a great example of New Media.

Well, on this network, the TFC (The Fifth Coulmn) News network, there is a site called Sleeper Cells. On this site our podcast will be available, just as it is here, on YouTube, on Disinformation, and on Itunes. More options, more listeners, more engagement. More Free Radical Media.

The podcast is, as always, free; we are just trying to make it more available and listenable. Your preferred method of listening does not change. We hope you enjoy and support our new hosts, linked below!

In this installment, Mark Corske producer and writer of “The Engines of Domination” joins us to discuss his recent piece “The War on Reality” and it’s implications with our current materialistic paradigm. You can reach Mark and his work at http://www.enginesofdomination.com/